Mauve 👁💜 @mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe

One thing I'm noticing is that most of my friends have this idea that a "typical" viral infection is something very transient, it self-resolves, and then you're fine. It's coming as a massive surprise to them that SARS-CoV-2 might linger in the body, and that its effects may not be so transient. After all, it fights against what they "know" -- that viral infections are minor nuisances. They know about AIDs, but that's an exception, surely?

Is it?

Spoiler: no! See thread: 1/?

A little story.

In 2014, the UK charity, Stonewall, had a new CEO: Ruth Hunt.

Ruth wanted to make Stonewall trans inclusive. Up until that point it hadn’t been. Part of that effort was to recruit an advisory group from the UK trans community.

I was on that group. I ended up as its vice chair.

We spent the next year and a bit creating a document called “A Vision For Change”, which detailed what we thought the areas that trans equality campaigning should focus on in Britain.

Then the Brexit referendum happened and Cameron ragequit. Theresa May came in and it was apparent there was very little government apetite for the stuff we wanted.

But May, who was there when the same Sex marriage bill went through under the earlier coalition government had had something of a damascene conversion to LGBT rights issues. Stranger things have happened (but not many!)

So she wanted something from our list that was quick, easy, and uncontroversial. Obviously we were disappointed, but she was presented with bringing Britain’s antiquated Gender Recognition Act up to date, and in line with other European countries, as something simple. We honestly thought it was. It’s an administrative change of very little significant consequence, and actually no significance at all outside the trans community.

And it would have been simple, had an eclectic collection of unpleasant, obsessive arseholes with privileged access to the UK press not decided to start a culture war over trans people at that exact moment.

A culture war which, at least in England, they basically won. In part, this war was why I emigrated to Portugal.

Here we are, seven years later, and the result of Scotland finally wanting to implement a watered down version of the “easy win” we presented to Theresa May is apparently that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is willing to end the Union between England and Scotland over it.

So that’s my story. I am part of a small, elite cabal of LGBT people who wrote a document that is poised to destroy the last vestiges of the British Empire.

Go me! If there are any other governments you want destabilising, my bank details are available on request. I provide reasonable rates.

See these words from @chockenberry, developer of Twitterific?

Exactly what I said would happen when Elon Musk screwed over 3rd Party developers.

Twitter didn't create broad adoption of Twitter. It was 3rd party developers.

Now devs are pissed—much more than they were before.

What will they do next?

Drive broad adoption of the Fediverse.

Not only former Twitter developer making these moves. @tapbots is also making an app for the Fediverse.

Bad move, Twitter!

https://furbo.org/2023/01/15/the-shit-show/

Does anyone know of a ... geowiki? software?

Something that lets you have pages organized by like streets and parks and maybe other openstreetmaps objects ,but have a forum or page there to discuss?

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
-- Bertrand Russell

#anarchism #quote #bot

Why are ethics questions always like:
"is it ethical to steal bread to feed your starving family?"

And not:
"is it ethical to sell bread when families are starving?"

@quoteme

The pure, untempered gift of suddenly realizing it's Saturday, not Sunday

The character of the light made it possible to get the texture and color in the feathers.

Tech is the funniest industry and it always will be.

It's a bunch of people who think they are creatures of pure logic, but every problem they try to solve turns out to be a human problem that is inherently illogical.

The results are endlessly hysterical.

I’d been hearing about the coal-mine protests in Germany, but this photo by Sean Gallup is the first that gave me a real sense of the titanic size of the thing and what’s being protested. Just… unreal.